Black Friday discounts

With total holiday spending expected to reach $656 billion this year — up from nearly $631 billion in 2015 — the personal-finance website WalletHub conducted an in-depth analysis of 2016’s Best Stores for Black Friday.

WalletHub surveyed 8,000 deals from 35 of the biggest U.S. retailers’ 2016 Black Friday ad scans to identify the stores offering the biggest discounts in various product categories, such as “Appliances,” “Jewelry” and “Toys.”

Best Black Friday retailers (average percentage discount)

1. Macy’s (63.35 percent)

2. Stage (62.81 percent)

3. JCPenney (62.79 percent)

4. Harbor Freight (62.58 percent)

5. Gordmans (61.59 percent)

6 Kohl’s (58.15 percent)

7 Shopko (55.55 percent)

8 Fred Meyer (49.70 percent)

9 Craft Warehouse (45.03 percent)

10 Sears (43.89 percent)

Key Stats

• Macy’s has the highest overall discount rate at 63.35 percent, whereas Big Lots has the lowest at 23.52 percent.

• The overall average discount for Black Friday is 39 percent. Consumers should aim for this discount amount or higher to avoid Black-Friday traps.

• The “Toys” category has the biggest share of discounted items, 28.26 percent of all offers, whereas the “Books, Movies and Music” category has the smallest at 0.93 percent.